My Favorite (and Least Favorite) Behavior Philosophies

My Favorite (and Least Favorite) Behavior Philosophies discusses a real-life client who struggled with behavior, and how we problem solved that behavior in speech therapy sessions. I also discuss how my own behavior philosophies have changed in my ten years as a speech-language pathologist.

A Case Study

Seth was a young client who was bright, happy-go-lucky, and fun to be around.

He had started elementary school, and was doing well. His teacher loved him. He liked the work and structure of school, and he was doing well.

In speech, though, we had a problem. When it was time to transition to speech, he refused. Seth wouldn’t talk to me or any other adults. Instead, he would lay down on the ground and hide his face. He wouldn’t move. We tried giving him time to transition, but more time didn’t seem to help.

I wondered if it was because he didn’t like speech. However, once he transitioned he was happy and enjoyed the session. In fact, he said he wanted to come to speech every day!

He also struggled with leaving speech. He would wiggle, wander the room, and take a long time to get his jacket on and get out the door. Sometimes, leaving the speech room took 10 minutes (or more).

 Choices, Choices

There are many ways to approach behavior. In fact, my philosophies have changed dramatically since I started as an SLP 10 years ago.

Ten years ago, I would have gone with a consequence.

Five years ago, I would have praised behavior (such as smooth transitions). I would have offered rewards (stickers, choices).

Now? I’m trying something different. And I want to invite you on the journey as I figure it out. Here’s a review of some popular behavior philosophies (I’ve got experience with them all) and some thoughts on each.

Punitive (aka Consequences)

If I wanted to take this approach with Seth, I would have reminded him that he’d miss out on a preferred activity if he didn’t transition. The idea is to find a motivator and remind the child of that motivator during the behavior problem.

There are some times when this can work. However, in this case it was clear to me that Seth was trying his best. He was genuinely having a hard time with transitions and processing his emotions.

If I had gone this approach, Seth likely wouldn’t have transitioned at all. If he is extremely upset, and I remind him we won’t get to do what he really wants to do in speech, where would that leave me? Seth would be less (not more) likely to transition with me in this case.

Antecedent/Behavior/Consequence, Positive Behavior Intervention Support

Being a team member creating behavior plans was a big part of my work when I worked as a school district employee. In fact, the amount of time I spent being a part of creating behavior plans is one of the reasons I left that work setting. In addition to being time consuming, the behavior plans often were ineffective. This was incredibly frustrating given the amount of time we school employees spent on these plans.

Let’s problem solve through Seth’s scenario using this framework.

First, we’d figure out why the child was demonstrating the behavior. For instance, if he was trying to get or avoid something. We would take the positive route by rewarding him when he transitioned. Rewards included stars, stickers, and preferred activities.

The idea of the Antecedent/Behavior/Consequence (ABC) plan is to uncover the antecedent, behavior, and consequence. The antecedent is what happened right before the behavior (such as: when it was time to transition to speech). As far as behavior, we want to understand its purpose. Is it to get something? To avoid something? and Consequence (What happens after the child does this? Does the behavior work?). A strength is that these plans often focus on positivity (for example, verbal praise or a sticker on a star chart). However, a challenge is that these plans often don’t teach specific behavior skills to children.

ABC Plan: The Why

These ABC behavior plans reward children for what they are doing right, but don’t really focus on teaching them the skills they need to learn when the problem behavior happens. Children don’t work through why others want them to demonstrate that behavior and they often don’t work through the empathy and social problem solving skills they need to understand why that behavior isn’t serving them or those around them.

Beyond the challenge of children working for stars and stickers without fully understanding why they should demonstrate these behaviors, we often don’t involve children directly in these plans. In other words, we aren’t involving children in the problem solving and we aren’t teaching them to recognize their behaviors and problem solve through them. When this happens, skills often don’t generalize to other scenarios.

For example, the plan may be focused on a certain child not blurting out in class. This child may be given positive rewards for not blurting out in class. But, why is he/she doing this? Is it about impulse control? Is attention an issue and is it hard to hold on to a thought? Is this a social skill the child hasn’t learned yet? How can this specific child learn the underlying social/emotional/behavior skills he/she needs to be successful?

Collaborative Problem Solving (Dr Ross Greene)

This idea takes a different approach. It asks:

What specific skill is lacking? How can we teach that skill?

The idea is to a) define lagging skills and b) collaboratively create a plan (with the child) moving forward.

In the case of Seth, emotional regulation and transitioning locations were difficult. The idea would be to have a conversation with Seth and implement some things that might help him. In fact, that is what I’m currently trying. We’ve figured out that:

1. Seth will walk straight into my room (to make for a quicker transition). If it’s time for speech and I’m with someone else, he’s still allowed to walk in the room (and wait quietly, of course).

2. We’ve developed a visual schedule and have a predictable routine for Seth to help with emotional regulation.

3. Seth has asked that choices are offered when he’s having a meltdown. It usually means he doesn’t want something to happen, so we can offer two choices of different options. These options would still both be OK with adults and he can choose which he’d rather have.

4. Seth is working at home on saying “I need help” when he feels overwhelmed. When there are minor transitions at home and he’s able to use his words, he’ll be encouraged to use this phrase. If he practices this, it’ll become easier and easier so that he can use his words when he feels overwhelmed (instead of laying on the floor and hiding his face).

Collaborative Problem Solving – Pros and Cons

This approach, outlined in the book Lost at School, (Amazon affiliate link) is detailed and can’t possibly be covered in one blog post. I highly recommend the book mentioned.

However, one positive is that it focuses on teaching specific skills, and that does really seem to result in growth for children.

The con of this plan is that it can be difficult to get buy in for both teachers and parents. They may want to see consequences and not support collaborative problem solving.

Teaching Specific Skills

Are some behaviors willful? Yes, absolutely! For example, if a child consistently gets out of bed at night, and gets (as a result) an extra hour to stay up with his/her mom and dad, you can bet that child will continue to use that behavior to get the preferred result.

However, we are talking about solutions where kids have big reactions that demonstrate struggling with a specific skill. I’m counting on you to wear your Behavior Scientist hat to consider the lagging skills involved when your child (or the child you are working with) has behavior challenges.

The idea of this framework is that kids do well if they can. By outlining a specific skill a child needs to learn, we can teach children specific skills to help them overcome that lagging skill.

Growth and Setbacks

If you are working on a specific, consistent behavior (which I suggest you do), keep in mind there will be growth, setbacks, and times where behaviors increase. During these times, you’ll wonder if your plan is working. Be flexible, and adjust as needed. First, make sure you see overall growth. Children have sleepless nights, fights with siblings, and school assignments. These can all cause stress and may impact their behavior.

Keeping data is a helpful way to look at overall growth. For example, in the case of Seth, I might tally the number of sessions where he transitioned in less than 5 minutes, or the length of time (by minutes) he took to transition. If one day seems particularly difficult, I can zoom out of the situation as a whole to see if what we are doing is working.

Did it Work?

As to if it worked, my answer is, I don’t know – yet. To be honest, I’ve gone through other behavior philosophies without the results I’ve wanted to see. I’ve found that consequences don’t teach behavior skills. I’ve learned that sticker charts reinforce priority behaviors, but don’t teach children how to act.

By continuing to use strategies that don’t seem to be working, we aren’t helping our kids.

So, here’s to trying something new as we support children as they learn new skills, instead of punishing them for the skills they don’t (yet!) have.

Try This at Home

Agree? Disagree? My hope is to share some ideas that may get you thinking about behavior differently – even if you disagree.

If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy another philosophy-type posts by scrolling back: my thoughts on speech therapy and the long haul, or another real-life client story: a discussion of a client’s impressive progress who has a Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) diagnosis.

Practical Tips For Encouraging the Growth Mindset

If you are interested in this topic, please check out a previous post on defining the growth mindset. This theory comes from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. This post focuses on practical steps you can take to help your child grow his or her growth mindset.

A review:

What is a growth mindset? A growth mindset is the belief that our skills and abilities change over time with practice as we try new tasks. So, we may not be good at drawing when we start, but our skills can improve with practice. The growth mindset philosophy suggests that by continuing to practice a task, we get good at it. How? By believing that your skills will improve with practice. By putting hard work into a skill, we improve and then excel.

1. Tell Stories of the Growth Mindset in Action

If you are a teacher, tell success stories of persistence. For example, tell about a student who thought they couldn’t learn a certain subject. How did they persist to succeed? If you are a parent, tell a story of your own success through hard work. For example, tell a story of when an academic task was difficult for you, and how you stuck with it to improve.

2. Encourage The “Big Oops”

If you are going to make a mistake, make it messy and juicy. Wait. What?? My generation (and likely yours too) prized excellence and perfectionism. That perspective can be counterproductive in the case of the growth mindset.

In fact, the growth mindset encourages an entirely different perspective. Instead of shrinking from failure, embrace mistakes. After all, we all make mistakes. In fact, by making mistakes we often learn our best lessons. Talk about your mistakes and what you learned. Encourage your child that failure (and trying again) makes our brains even stronger.

3. Use Specific Praise

Instead of:
“Nice job, that was easy for you!”
Try:

“That was a long and hard worksheet. You stuck to it and finished the whole thing. How wonderful!”

Instead of:

“I was never good at math either!”

Try:

“I can tell you are working hard on this. Let’s work together to finish this assignment.”

4. Model Positive Self Talk

Children are often confronted with difficult tasks at school. Learning positive self talk to walk them through this process can help make this easier. Practice modeling self talk that is both kind and encouraging.

For example, instead of:

“This is too hard!”
Try:

“This task feels difficult, but I’m learning how to do it.”

Or:

“This is hard, but I can keep trying”

How To Develop A Growth Mindset: A Summary

The most important way to help your child with their own growth mindset is to have one yourself. That means telling stories of the growth mindset in action that you’ve seen in your own life. That also means telling stories of failure (or the big oops) and what you’ve learned from them. These stories can be events that happened in the past, but also things that happened that day (or week).

Also, consider your praise. First, replace things like “that was easy” or “good job” with more specific language. I have found while the idea of this is pretty simple, being consistent with this is difficult. Even so, this little effort can lead to big change. When I use this strategy in my clinic, I notice a big difference in my clients.

Also, modeling proactive self talk can be something you do in real time. For example, as you learn new tasks, discuss your own persistence. Try using language like “this is difficult, but I’m going to get better at this.” By modeling this, you provide a low-pressure scenario for your child to see this skill in action.

The Change Starts With You

The best way to help the children in our lives move towards the growth mindset is to be a good example. We need to believe in the growth mindset and practice it ourselves. Although the idea of this is simple, putting this into practice can be the biggest challenge of all.

I hope this article provided useful tips to help your child move more towards the growth mindset. Remember this process takes time and patience. Check in next week for more specific examples of language to use to encourage the growth mindset. After all, sometimes the most actionable way to make a change can be to have a script. See you then! 

5 Sidewalk Chalk Games for Speech and Language Development

This is a re-publish of one of our most popular summer blog topics – how to use sidewalk chalk for speech therapy sessions. We are bringing it out of the vault to share this summer, since we’ve heard that it’s been helpful for SLPs and parents looking for some fun summer activities. Enjoy!

Is your child enrolled in speech therapy? Are you worried about the summer slide, and your child potentially losing speech skills over the summer?

Are you a speech-language pathologist working this summer? (I’m right there with you!) Are you looking for fun and engaging ideas for summer activities?

If so, grab some sidewalk chalk, and let’s chat!

The Summer Slide

Summer is fast approaching, and families with kids in speech therapy may be worried about regression. With these families in mind, I have come up with some fun speech-focused summer games. All it requires is a slab of pavement and a few dollars of sidewalk chalk!

Storybook

Create a storybook directly on the pavement! Make up a story and ask your child to draw it as you go along. Your child can then retell the story with the aid of the drawing. Next, switch roles and draw your child’s story. When retelling the story, try making “mistakes” and see if your child catches it. Ask your child to correct you and explain why you were wrong. Children relish the opportunity to correct adults! They’ll also get some practice explaining their thoughts and ideas to others.

Tongue Twister Hopscotch

This activity would be a great pick for a child who needs articulation (speech sound production) practice. Rather than numbers, draw letters in a hopscotch game. A soft toy or a beanbag could take the role of the hopscotch marker. Each time the child lands on a letter, he has to repeat a tongue twister containing that letter. The adult could prepare tongue twisters beforehand, or encourage your child to come up with something silly and new. Make sure to take turns and get silly along with them! A little laughter can help ease up a child who may be self conscious of their articulation.

Bullseye Target

Create a target and take turns throwing a soft toy, sponge, or ball at the target. If your child is ready for numbers, use a point system and assign someone to draw a scoreboard and tally points. This game can be adapted for any speech or language goal. Some possibilities: taking turns and answering questions, articulating challenging phrases, or making rhymes and songs.

Categories

Think of a few categories and draw several items for each. Your child can circle each item in a category with a particular color of chalk, or connect them all with lines. Talk about why some items do or do not belong to a category. An item may not be part of a category because of its size or color, for example. The categories can be adjusted to the right level for your child. For instance, animals versus non-animal items would be an easy categorization, whereas animals categorized by habitat (sea or jungle?) would be more challenging.

Descriptors

In this activity, one person chooses a secret item and gives the other person 3 clues. Using the clues, the other person draws a picture of what he/she thinks the item is. Switch roles so your child gets opportunities for both listening and talking. Another way to play this game is to draw three pictures and the other person chooses the described item. To make it more difficult, use two clues that apply to all the items, and only one that gives it away. For example, draw a broccoli, a lizard, and a lime. Two similar clues could be that the secret item is small and green. Then announce one differential clue: it is used to make juice!

5 Sidewalk Chalk Ideas for Speech and Language Development – Let’s go!

Are you ready to hit the pavement and sharpen those speech and language skills? Remember, working on speech and language at home is always a huge part of a child’s success, no matter the season. Just because summer is here doesn’t mean your child has to lose the skills he worked so hard to gain over the school year.

Three Favorite Toddler Toys

Are you a parent with toddlers at home, looking for toy recommendations?

Are you a speech-language pathologist (SLP) looking for tried-and-true toy ideas for toddlers?

Three Favorite Toddler Toys

I have often fallen into the trap of buying what I thought was The Perfect Toy.

It would provide endless hours of entertainment for my clients. It would be engaging and help me with my speech and language objectives.
Yet in the end, The Perfect Toy ended up sitting on the shelf.

Sound familiar? If so, read on. I have compiled a short list of my most favored toys among my toddler clients. I hope to save you some time and money in your toy search.

(Some Amazon affiliate links are used in this post)

B. Whacky Ball

This colorful toy comes with four balls that are whacked into a chute, so toddlers can watch the balls fall. The balls hit a spinning wheel as they travel. There is a mirror as a backdrop, which makes watching the balls even more fun. My tip is to hide the hammer it that comes with. I’m sure you can imagine why giving a hammer (albeit a plastic one) to a toddler isn’t always a great idea. That, and the noise it makes can be surprising (and unwelcome) for other children (and adults). I have found my clients are perfectly happy to push the ball into the chute with their hands.

Battat Sound Puzzle Box

My clients get a kick out of this toy (don’t tell anyone, I kind of do, too!). This puzzle box comes with blocks with cute bears on them. It can be used for learning shapes and colors. The bear blocks have various expressions, making it a great choice for emotions too. The blocks are put into their corresponding shape, and they slide down into a tube to their spot. The best part is the hilarious and entertaining noise the blocks make as they travel. Bonus tip: blow into the bear shapes to make a fun whistling sound!

Update - the bear version is no longer available, but you can get an adorable owl version that does the same thing.

Eric Carle Stacking Blocks

Endless amounts of games can be invented with this set of stacking and nesting blocks. I like this block set in particular because of how much it lends to learning and conversation. Multiple pictures appear on each block. The pictures provide chances to learn colors, numbers, days of the week, and shapes. The variety of sounds from these pictures makes this a great tool for clients learning to produce new sounds. A tip: when the toddler stacks all the blocks, reward them by encouraging them to knock it down!

Now, it’s time to play!

Who doesn’t love saving time and money searching for the perfect toy? I hope you have found something to add to your therapy materials arsenal or toy collection at home. Do you know of a toy toddlers can’t seem to get enough of? Come visit me on Instagram, and let me know!

Speech Sound Development: Ages 3-5

Last week’s article on intelligibility answered the question:

How much (or what percentage) of what my child says should be understood by others?

You can read the last blog post for more on that.

This article seeks to answer another common question parents ask:

What specific sounds should my child be producing?

This question is most commonly asked by parents of younger children, so today’s article will focus on children ages 3-5. Next blog post, I’ll discuss speech sound development for older children.

If you look online for information on this topic, you may find conflicting information. It can be difficult to wade through all the charts and articles and find consistent answers to this question. Even my graduate school textbooks didn’t always agree on exactly when sounds should be formed, because there is a varied range which is considered typical. Thankfully, there are some general guidelines which are fairly consistent.

The following list includes red flag sounds. If your child cannot produce these sounds by the age mentioned, an evaluation by a Speech Language Pathologist is typically recommended.

These sounds should be produced at the beginning, middle, end of words. If you aren’t sure, ask a Speech Language Pathologist to complete a screening or evaluation. A full evaluation will typically include a conversational speech sample. Sometimes, a child can say these sounds perfectly well at the one word level (for example, a child says all the sounds in the word “dog”), but in conversation there are more errors (for example, when saying “I want to see the dog,” the sounds in the word “dog” are mispronounced). These errors at the conversation level can make a child very difficult to understand.

If your child is bilingual, speech sound development may be a bit different, and a Speech Language Pathologist may take speech samples in both languages.

If you live in the Rogue Valley and are concerned about your child’s speech sound development, my clinic in Ashland is currently accepting new clients. Feel free to contact me if you’d like more information or to schedule an evaluation.